Page 81 of Proof By Contradiction
For one second my hands are still where they were, tied in front of me, resting against my stomach. Then he touches the back of my knuckles.
‘Up.’
Not an order. Not quite a request.
I raise them over my head.
He follows the movement, careful with the angle of my shoulders, and settles my wrists above the pillow rather than pulling them there. Then he takes the spare length from between the cuffs and feeds it through the rail of the headboard, back to itself, neat and low and quick enough that I don’t see the shape of it until I feel it hold.
Not stretched.
Not displayed.
Held.
Anchored.
He sits back to look at me.
The look does something to my breathing I didn’t anticipate.
‘How are you.’
‘Yeah.’ My voice sounds different in this position. ‘I’m—yeah.’
‘Word.’
‘Green.’
He smiles, very small. Then he is on me.
He keeps his clothes on. That is the choice that almost finishes me before he’s started. He kisses my mouth, my throat, the bone at the base of my neck. Pushes the waistband of my jeans down to my hips, no further. Puts his mouth on the inside of my elbow, on the muscle of my upper arm, on my ribs. He licks the line of hair below my navel and stops. Undoes my belt one-handed and leaves the zip closed.
I cannot reach him. The rope is doing the rope’s job.
My hands open and close above my head. The cotton tightens against my pulse on the inhale and slackens on the exhale, and I learn, in real time, that this is its own rhythm, separate from the rhythm in my hips. The two rhythms argue. Then agree.
‘Notebook?’ Low, against my collarbone.
‘Green.’ My voice is somewhere I can’t quite locate. ‘Don’t stop.’
He doesn’t.
He is unhurried, which is the cruelest setting. Mouth on my chest. Hand, slow, low, never quite where I am asking. I make a sound I do not have a name for. He makes one back.
I come like that, eventually, with my jeans only partly undone and his hand inside the fabric and his mouth on the tendon at the side of my throat, and the rope holding my arms above my head taking the surge of it because my arms have nowhere else to go.
He holds me through it. Forehead against my temple. Doesn’t let himself.
‘Stay with me.’ Quiet, into my hair. ‘I’m coming back to your hands. Tell me if anything has changed.’
‘Nothing’s changed.’
He works the half-hitch loose at the headboard first. Then the larks-heads at each wrist, one at a time, fingers slow. Massages the place where the rope sat. There’s a faint pink line across the inside of each wrist—not raw, not white-pressed, justvisible.He bends and kisses the right one, then the left.
I find I can’t speak.
‘Word.’ Gently.
